The Beast in the Red Forest (18 page)

Vasko took the mug and turned it so that the handle was facing away from him but he did not lift it from the table. ‘You recently passed on information about a man named Colonel Andrich.’

‘That’s right. He arrived in Rovno two days ago.’

‘I need you to tell me where I can find him.’

‘That’s a nice pistol,’ said Malashenko, eyeing the gun belt on the table. Slowly, he reached out towards it.

‘If you want to keep those fingers,’ said Vasko, ‘don’t touch anything that doesn’t belong to you.’

Grumbling, Malashenko withdrew his hand.

‘Just do as you’re told and you will be well rewarded,’ Vasko told him.

‘How well?’

Vasko opened the satchel and pulled out something which had been placed inside an old grey sock. He set it on the table and pushed it across to Malashenko.

Malashenko picked up the sock and tipped the bar of gold on to the table. The spit dried up in his mouth. ‘Why are you paying me so much?’ he asked warily.

‘If it were up to me, I wouldn’t, but this is what the Admiral thinks you’re worth.’

Malashenko thought about Antonina’s advice, to leave Rovno and never come back. Better to travel with one bar of gold, he told himself, than with a hundred bags of salt.

Vasko slid the bar back into the sock and returned it to his farrier’s satchel. ‘Are we agreed?’

Malashenko nodded slowly. ‘Stay here tonight,’ he said. ‘You will be safe. I’ll be back in the morning, after I have found your Colonel Andrich.’

That first night in the cabin, as Vasko lay in the bunk, surrounded by the distantly familiar smells of Russian black bread, Russian tobacco and the fishy reek of Russian boot grease distilled from the rotted husks of Lake Baikal shrimp, he listened to the steady thudding of artillery in the distance.

He put his hands against his ears, hoping to block out the sound. But it didn’t work. The relentless pounding of the guns seemed to rise up from the earth beneath the cabin, until even the air he breathed appeared to tremble.

Vasko moaned and rocked from side to side, plagued by memories of the days he had spent in the hold of that prison ship bound for Kolyma after it had run aground on the shoals of Reshiri Island. Each wave that struck that crippled vessel sounded like a cannon ball against the iron hull. As the freezing water rose higher and higher in the cargo bays where he and the others had been left to die, Vasko had focused on the sound of the waves in order to drown out first the screams, then the pleas, then prayers and at last only the whimpering of those who had abandoned any hope of rescue. By the time the Japanese Coastguard peeled away a section of the hull to let them out, the sound of those waves had fixed forever in Vasko’s mind, until it had become like the beating of a second heart, driving him so close to madness that he could no longer recall how it felt to be sane.

It did not take long for Malashenko to learn both where and when Andrich’s meeting with the partisan leaders would take place. For a man of his particular abilities, few secrets could stay hidden in the rubble of that town.

First thing the following morning, he delivered the information to Vasko.

Within six hours, Andrich and the partisans who’d been with him were dead. Not long afterwards came the news that Commander Yakushkin had also been murdered.

As soon as Malashenko had dropped off the little girl at her grandmother’s house, ignoring the old woman’s questions about her daughter, he made his way back to the cabin where Vasko had been hiding in order to collect his bar of gold.

But Vasko wasn’t there.

Assuming that he had been tricked, Malashenko turned around and headed back to Rovno, roaring curses at the treetops on his way.

Admiral Canaris was sleeping in his chair, as he often did after a lunch at Horchner’s, his favourite restaurant in Berlin. With his hands folded across his stomach and a pair of slippers on his feet, these brief moments of oblivion had lately become his only respite from the unending stream of bad news which occupied his waking hours.

There was a gentle knocking on the door and Canaris’s adjutant, Lieutenant Wolke, entered the room. He was a young man, with a straight back, rosy cheeks and honest-looking eyes. He carried a print-out of a message just received from an informant behind the Russian lines.

The Admiral’s dachshunds, which had also been taking a nap, looked up from their cushioned chair and, recognising Wolke’s familiar face, lowered their heads and went back to sleep.

Moving almost silently across the room, Wolke placed the message upon the Admiral’s desk.

The Admiral breathed in deeply, then exhaled in a long, snuffling breath, but did not wake.

Wolke gritted his teeth. The Admiral did not like to be woken, but the message had been classified A3, which meant it was of the highest importance and required immediate attention. Which meant waking Canaris, whether he liked it or not.

Wolke cleared his throat.

Canaris’s eyes slid open. He blinked uncomprehendingly at Wolke, as if he had never seen the man before.

‘Admiral,’ said Wolke, his voice barely above a whisper. ‘An A3 has just come in.’

Slowly, Canaris sat forward, rubbing the sleep from his face, and picked up the piece of paper with one hand. At the same time, he reached out with his other hand, fetched his glasses and perched them upon his long and dignified nose.

The message contained an intercepted Soviet radio transmission indicating that Colonel Andrich had been killed in a shoot-out with Soviet partisans.

‘Good,’ muttered Canaris. ‘They have taken the bait.’ It was exactly what he had been hoping for.

But the second half of the message was not.

It went on to say that Commander Yakushkin, of the NKVD’s motorised rifle battalion, currently stationed in Rovno, had also been found dead. It gave no details about where Yakushkin had died or who had killed him or what the circumstances had been. Canaris cursed under his breath.

‘Is everything all right, Admiral?’ asked Wolke.

‘No,’ replied Canaris. ‘No, it is not.’ But he did not explain further, and Wolke knew better than to ask. ‘Has there been any word from Vasko?’

‘No news yet, Admiral.’

Canaris let the telegram slip from his fingers. ‘As soon as he returns to Berlin, have him sent straight to my office.’

‘Yes, Admiral.’

‘And Wolke . . .’

‘Yes, Admiral?’

‘In the event that Vasko does not appear, type up a report placing the blame upon Otto Skorzeny.’

Wolke nodded. ‘
Zu Befehl
, Herr Admiral.’

Having carried out the liquidation of Colonel Andrich, Vasko spent the rest of that day, as well as the following day, lying low in the ruins of an abandoned house not far from the hospital where Major Kirov was being treated for his gunshot wound.

By doing so, he was directly disobeying the orders of Admiral Canaris to immediately transmit the message that his task had been carried out, after which Skorzeny would dispatch a guide to escort him back across the lines.

He guessed that, by now, word of the colonel’s murder might already have reached Berlin. If so, Skorzeny would be waiting for the signal.

But the news that Pekkala was alive had thrown Vasko’s mind into confusion. When that gawky Commissar had stumbled down into the bunker, calling out Pekkala’s name like some fragment of an ancient spell, Vasko heard again his mother’s voice, assuring him and his sister that their father would soon be back where he belonged, thanks to the work of the incorruptible Inspector. ‘Our prayers have been answered,’ she assured them and, for a while, at least, the young Vasko had believed this fairy tale.

It wasn’t until his mother’s arrest on the charge of possessing foreign currency that Vasko realised Pekkala had betrayed them. But only when the judge at the People’s Tribunal read out the length of their sentences, to be served in the Gulag at Kolyma, did Vasko understand the magnitude of this treachery.

Weeks later, when their ship ran aground on the shoals of Tetsumu, and Vasko had remained alive in the freezing darkness of that flooded compartment by clinging to the grotesque heap of drowned bodies, he swore that if he ever made it out of there he would consecrate his life to avenging the deaths of his family.

By 1941, under the personal guidance of Admiral Canaris, Vasko had become an agent of the Abwehr. Late that same year, news reached him that Pekkala had been killed not far from the Tsar’s summer estate at Tsarskoye Selo. At the time, Vasko did not know whether to feel satisfaction that the Emerald Eye was dead or disappointment that he had not been responsible for it.

But when he learned that Pekkala had somehow cheated death, Vasko knew at once what he must do, even if it meant disobeying Canaris.

This was the reason why Vasko had not executed Commissar Kirov that night in the bunker. He reasoned that, once Pekkala learned of Major Kirov’s injuries, the Inspector would visit him at the hospital. All that Vasko had to do was wait until Pekkala made contact with the major, then finish them both off together.

That first night, from his hiding place among the ruins, Vasko kept watch on the front door of the hospital, waiting for the moment when Pekkala would arrive. But after waiting for almost two days, and with no sign of the Inspector, Vasko knew he had to act or risk losing his chance to kill Pekkala. He waited until the middle of the night, then made his way into the hospital, determined either to extract the Inspector’s whereabouts from the major or, if Kirov didn’t know, to kidnap the wounded man and thereby, he hoped, to draw Pekkala out into the open.

When Vasko learned from Captain Dombrowsky that the major had already gone, he pursued the only lead he had left, which brought him to the nurse’s house. There, Vasko stumbled across Commander Yakushkin and his bodyguard. The killing of Yakushkin, although it must have seemed a calculated attack to those who found his body, was no more than a collateral necessity. Vasko’s real target that night had been the nurse, from whom he hoped to learn the major’s location, but Yakushkin, mistaking Vasko’s presence for that of a rival, had foiled his plan with a bullet through the woman’s heart.

After leaving the apartment, Vasko had returned to the ruined house where he had hidden for the past two days. Knowing that even in the uniform of a Red Army officer, his solitary presence at that time of night would attract unwanted attention, Vasko decided to wait until first light before returning to the cabin, which was some distance outside the town. Once there, he would enlist Malashenko’s help in tracking down Pekkala.

Shortly before dawn, a group of partisans arrived in a battered truck and entered the house where Yakushkin and the nurse had been killed. When Vasko recognised Malashenko among them, he knew that this must be the famous Barabanschikov Atrad. They departed soon afterwards, leaving Malashenko behind to guard the place.

While Vasko was debating whether to leave cover and approach Malashenko, to see if the partisan knew anything of Kirov’s whereabouts, the Barabanschikovs returned.

Vasko was astonished to see Major Kirov climb down from the truck, along with a tall man in civilian clothes. The moment Vasko realised he was looking at Pekkala, he felt his whole body go numb. His first thought was to open fire immediately and keep shooting until he ran out of bullets, in the hopes that a lucky shot might bring down the Inspector. It took all his self-control not to squander the only chance he knew he was likely to get. With a truckload of partisans between him and the Inspector, and only a pistol for a weapon, especially one loaded with bullets which were only accurate at close range, Vasko knew that he would never make the shot before the partisans gunned him down.

At the same time, Vasko realised that since Pekkala was now investigating the murder of Commander Yakushkin, it was only a matter of time before the Inspector tracked him down.

Vasko knew his best, perhaps his only, hope, was to let Pekkala do precisely that. Only in this way, thought Vasko, can I lure him to a place of my own choosing, where his death will not come at the cost of my own life.

For now, though, his primary concern was to leave this hiding place where, if discovered, it was clear he wouldn’t stand a chance. Vasko decided to make for the cabin in the woods; the only place he could think of where he might be safe.

No sooner had the Barabanschikovs left, however, than Red Army soldiers arrived and began patrolling the streets, obviously looking for whoever had murdered their commander.

The Red Army continued its patrols until just after sunset, by which time Vasko was cold, exhausted and hungry.

Just as he was preparing to move out, gangs of partisans appeared and began going door to door, intent on capturing whoever had murdered their leaders in the bunker the night before.

Vasko was trapped in the ruins, as a routine quickly established itself whereby the Red Army controlled the streets by day and the partisans took over after dark. By the morning of the second day, he had eaten his way through the small tin of emergency rations he always carried with him on missions. The rations came in a small, oval tin and consisted of chocolate heavily laced with caffeine, which offered him little more than an upset stomach and a case of jangling nerves.

Vasko knew that time was running out. Pekkala was still out there somewhere, and Skorzeny would not wait forever.

Vasko decided that, if the situation had not changed by the following morning, he would walk out in the daylight, hoping that the green metal lozenges on his collar tabs, denoting the rank of captain, might buy him at least a moment’s hesitation from any Red Army patrol which crossed his path. A moment would be all that he needed. As for trying to slip past the partisans, Vasko did not think much of his chances.

That night, wild dogs howled among the ruins. Vasko heard their snarling as they feasted on the dead. With frozen fingers locked around the gun, Vasko curled up in a ball beneath a sheet of corrugated iron. Sleet and rain pelted down upon him, the sound of it amplified against the rusted metal. That night, over the muttering of the wind, Vasko picked up fragments of voices and the noise of babies crying. Once, he caught the sound of balalaika music.